“Marriage and the family constitute the decisive foundation for a healthy development of the civil society of countries and peoples,” the Pontiff affirmed.

He noted that “marriage as a basic form of ordering the relationship between man and woman and, at the same time, as basic cell of the state community, has also been molded by biblical faith.””Thus marriage has given Europe its particular aspect and its humanism, also and precisely because it has had to learn to acquire continually the characteristic of fidelity and of renunciation traced by it,” the Holy Father said.

On the other hand, the Pope added, it is “because of the different types of union which have no foundation in the history of the culture and of law in Europe.”

“The Church cannot approve legislative initiatives that imply a valuation of alternative models of the life of the couple and the family,” he stated.

“These contribute to the weakening of the principles of the natural law and, hence, to the relativization of the whole of legislation, in addition to the awareness of values in society,” the Pontiff said.Thus he affirmed that “the Holy See notes with interest of the efforts of the political authorities to elaborate a change in the constitution,” which would “make reference in the preamble to the legacy of Christianity.”

The Holy Father added, “Also desirable is that the new constitution be inspired by Christian values, particularly in what concerns the position of marriage and the family in society and the protection of life.”He asserted, “Europe will no longer be Europe if this basic cell of the social construction disappears or is substantially transformed.””We all know how much risk marriage and the family run today,” Benedict XVI acknowledged.
He explained that on one hand, these are at risk “because of the erosion of its most profound values of stability and indissolubility, because of a growing liberalization of the right of divorce and of the custom, increasingly widespread, of man and woman living together without the juridical form and protection of marriage.”John Smeaton contrasts his words with the EngCath presentation:

•Archbishop Nichols, the archbishop of Westminster, who said on BBC TV that he did not know “whether the Catholic church should one day accept the reality of gay partnerships”

•Archbishop Nichols who said on BBC TV, the day after Pope Benedict left Britain for Rome, that the Catholic Bishops of Conference of England and Wales “did NOT oppose gay civil partnerships, we recognised that in English law there might be a case for those. We persistently said that these are not the same as marriage”

•Bishop McMahon, the bishop of Nottingham, who is open to headteachers of Catholic schools being in same sex unions and who says the Church is not opposed to civil partnerships (Bishop McMahon is chairman of the Catholic Education Service of England and Wales)

•Archbishop Nichols who, questioned about his support for the provision of Masses for homosexuals who openly dissent from Catholic teaching, told those who oppose what’s going on to “hold their tongue”.Ummm….

Vincent Nichols, archbishop of Westminster – and Bishops McMahon’s predecessor as CES chairman – was also interviewed by Mr Dowd. Archbishop Nichols was asked about the regular provision of Masses for a homosexual group in a central London parish, and the equally regular protests by faithful pro-life/pro-family Catholics against that provision.

Archbishop Nichols said:

“anybody from the outside who is trying to cast a judgement on the people who come forward for Communion [there], really ought to learn to hold their tongue.”Yet this totally ignores the evidence that the Soho Masses are organised by and for Catholics who dissent from the Church’s teaching on homosexuality,….

Cardinal Raymond Burke, the prefect of the Apostolic Signatura, gave strong support to Catholics who refuse to hold their tongues about such matters. He said:

“Lying or failing to tell the truth, however, is never a sign of charity. A unity … not founded on the truth of the moral law is not the unity of the Church. The Church’s unity is founded on speaking the truth with love … “

It’s a popular idea in the Church – ‘unity’ that is not based on truth. It is based on an idea that everything is just fine on the surface, but underneath is a multitude of sin and division between right and wrong. Unity not based on truth is not unity, obviously. But I’ve been told off by a priest for promoting disunity by pointing out or highlighting error and dissent.

Purposefully holding one’s tongue by not rebuking a sinner (or accepting being rebuked!) is itself a supreme act of uncharity because we abandon a brother to sin and thus possible damnation. Thus our own uncharity will be judged.

What is wrong with this world nowadays when it is politically incorrect to offer the sick some medicine? Doubly so from within the Church. Woe, woe!

But I guess my question is rhetorical: “what is wrong” is clearly we are being given trials of faith by both God and the devil in a way that previous ages were not.

But the Church IS against civil unions, so I do not know where Nichols is getting his information. It is time for the Pope to issue a world-wide declaration, again, on this so that there is not a doubt in British Catholic minds on this. I detest how weaselly the above bishops seem to be. God bless them, but how many people are they leading astray by their cowardice? Cormac came out against the adoption bill, abortion, embryonic research, and contraception, head-to-head with Blair’s government on such things. Nichols does not seem up to the task. (I know Cormac wasn’t perfect, especially regarding the EF, but he did make a scene and go public on some key issues).

AND, to pile on after Supertradmum, he should issue a VERY SHORT, CONCISE, maybe even BLUNT declaration. And he should use the royal We of all but his most recent predecessors!

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"We as Catholics have not properly combated (the culture) because we have not been taught our Catholic Faith, especially in the depth needed to address these grave evils of our time. This is a failure of catechesis both of children and young people that has been going on for fifty years. It is being addressed, but it needs much more radical attention... What has also contributed greatly to the situation is an exaltation of the virtue of tolerance which is falsely seen as the virtue which governs all other virtues. In other words, we should tolerate other people in their immoral actions to the extent that we seem also to accept the moral wrong. Tolerance is a virtue, but it is certainly not the principal virtue; the principal virtue is charity... Charity means speaking the truth. I have encountered it (not speaking the truth) many times myself as a priest and bishop. It is something we simply need to address. There is far too much silence — people do not want to talk about it because the topic is not 'politically correct.' But we cannot be silent any longer."

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"Where priest and people together face the same way, what we have is a cosmic orientation and also in interpretation of the Eucharist in terms of resurrection and trinitarian theology. Hence it is also an interpretation in terms of parousia, a theology of hope, in which every Mass is an approach to the return of Christ."

"In those situations where homosexual unions have been legally recognized or have been given the legal status and rights belonging to marriage, clear and emphatic opposition is a duty. ... If all Catholics are obliged to oppose the legal recognition of homosexual unions, Catholic politicians are obliged to do so in a particular way, in keeping with their responsibility as politicians." CDF 2003

One of the most dangerous errors is that civilization is automatically bound to increase and spread. The lesson of history is the opposite; civilization is a rarity, attained with difficulty and easily lost. The normal state of humanity is barbarism, just as the normal surface of the planet is salt water. Land looms large in our imagination and civilization in history books, only because sea and savagery are to us less interesting.
— C. S. Lewis

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"Latin is a precise, essential language. It will be abandoned, not because it is unsuitable for the new requirements of progress, but because the new men will not be suitable for it. When the age of demagogues and charlatans begins, a language like Latin will no longer be useful, and any oaf will be able to give a speech in public and talk in such a way that he will not be kicked off the stage. The secret to this will consist in the fact that, by making use of words that are general, elusive, and sound good, he will be able to speak for an hour without saying anything. With Latin, this is impossible."

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Food For Thought

“The legalization of the termination of pregnancy is none other than the authorization given to an adult, with the approval of an established law, to take the lives of children yet unborn and thus incapable of defending themselves. It is difficult to imagine a more unjust situation, and it is very difficult to speak of obsession in a matter such as this, where we are dealing with a fundamental imperative of every good conscience — the defense of the right to life of an innocent and defenseless human being.”

For your consideration…

"One of the most dangerous errors is that civilization is automatically bound to increase and spread. The lesson of history is the opposite; civilization is a rarity, attained with difficulty and easily lost. The normal state of humanity is barbarism, just as the normal surface of the planet is salt water. Land looms large in our imagination and civilization in history books, only because sea and savagery are to us less interesting."

- C.S. Lewis

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“I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square. His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the church has done so often in human history.”

Francis Card. George

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"It will never be known what acts of cowardice have been committed for fear of not looking sufficiently progressive."

Charles Pierre PéguyNotre Patrie, 1905

"If I ought to write the truth, I am of the mind that I ought to flee all meetings of bishops, because I have never seen any happy or satisfactory outcome to any council, nor one that has deterred evils more than it has occasioned their acceptance and growth."

St. Gregory Nazianzus
ep. 131 - AD 382

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“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

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Food For Thought

“Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites. . . . Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.”

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